CHAPTER II.

THE GREEK HUMANISTS: NATURE AND LAW.

I.

In the preceding chapter we traced the rise and progress of physical

philosophy among the ancient Greeks. We showed how a few great

thinkers, borne on by an unparalleled development of intellectual

activity, worked out ideas respecting the order of nature and the

constitution of matter which, after more than two thousand years, still

remain as fresh and fruitful as ever; and we found that, in achieving

these results, Greek thought was itself determined by ascertainable

laws. Whether controlling artistic imagination or penetrating to the

objective truth of things, it remained always essentially homogeneous,

and worked under the same forms of circumscription, analysis, and

opposition. It began with external nature, and with a far distant past;

nor could it begin otherwise, for only so could the subjects of its

later meditations be reached. Only after less sacred beliefs have been

shaken can ethical dogmas be questioned. Only when discrepancies of

opinion obtrude themselves on man’s notice is the need of an organising

logic experienced. And the mind’s eye, originally focussed for distant

objects alone, has to be gradually restricted in its range by the

pressure of accumulated experience before it can turn from past to

present, from successive to contemporaneous phenomena. We have now to

undertake the not less interesting task of showing how the new culture,

the new conceptions, the new power to think obtained through those

earliest speculations, reacted on the life from which they sprang,

transforming the moral, religious, and political creeds of Hellas, and

preparing, as nothing else could prepare, the vaster revolution which

has given a new dignity to existence, and substituted, in however

imperfect a form, for the adoration of animalisms which lie below man,

the adoration of an ideal which rises above him, but only personifies

the best elements of his own nature, and therefore is possible for a

perfected humanity to realise.

While most educated persons will admit that the Greeks are our masters

in science and literature, in politics and art, some even among those

who are free from theological prejudices will not be prepared to grant

that the principles which claim to guide our conduct are only a wider

extension or a more specific application of Greek ethical teaching.

Hebraism has been opposed to Hellenism as the educating power whence

our love of righteousness is derived, and which alone prevents the

foul orgies of a primitive nature-worship from being still celebrated

in the midst of our modern civilisation. And many look on old Roman

religion as embodying a sense of duty higher than any bequeathed

to us by Greece. The Greeks have, indeed, suffered seriously from

their own sincerity. Their literature is a perfect image of their

life, reflecting every blot and every flaw, unveiled, uncoloured,

undisguised. It was, most fortunately, never subjected to the revision

of a jealous priesthood, bent on removing every symptom inconsistent

with the hypothesis of a domination exercised by themselves through

all the past. Nor yet has their history been systematically falsified

to prove that they never wrongfully attacked a neighbour, and were

invariably obliged to conquer in self-defence. Still, even taking

the records as they stand, it is to Greek rather than to Hebrew or

Roman annals that we must look for examples of true virtue; and in

Greek literature, earlier than in any other, occur precepts like

those which are now held to be most distinctively characteristic of

Christian ethics. Let us never forget that only by Stoical teaching

was the narrow and cruel formalism of ancient Roman law elevated into

the ‘written reason’ of the imperial jurists; only after receiving

successive infiltrations of Greek thought was the ethnic monotheism of

Judaea expanded into a cosmopolitan religion. Our popular theologians

are ready enough to admit that Hellenism was providentially the means

of giving Christianity a world-wide diffusion; they ignore the fact

that it gave the new faith not only wings to fly, but also eyes to

see and a soul to love. From very early times there was an intuition

of humanity in Hellas which only needed dialectical development to

become an all-sufficient law of life. Homer sympathises ardently with

his own countrymen, but he never vilifies their enemies. He did not,

nor did any Greek, invent impure legends to account for the origin of

hostile tribes whose kinship could not be disowned; unlike Samuel, he

regards the sacrifice of prisoners with unmixed abhorrence. What would

he, whose Odysseus will not allow a shout of triumph to be raised

over the fallen, have said to Deborah’s exultation at the murder of a

suppliant fugitive? Courage was, indeed, with him the highest virtue,

and Greek literature abounds in martial spirit-stirring tones, but

it is nearly always by the necessities of self-defence that this

enthusiasm is invoked; with Pindar and Simonides, with Aeschylus and

Sophocles, it is resistance to an invader that we find so proudly

commemorated; and the victories which make Greek history so glorious

were won in fighting to repel an unjust aggression perpetrated either

by the barbarians or by a tyrant state among the Greeks themselves.

There was, as will be shown hereafter, an unhappy period when right was

either denied, or, what comes to the same thing, identified with might;

but this offensive paradox only served to waken true morality into a

more vivid self-consciousness, and into the felt need of discovering

for itself a stronger foundation than usage and tradition, a loftier

sanction than mere worldly success could afford. The most universal

principle of justice, to treat others as we should wish to be treated

ourselves, seems before the Rabbi Hillel’s time to have become almost

a common-place of Greek ethics;[43] difficulties left unsolved by the

Book of Job were raised to a higher level by Greek philosophy; and long

before St. Paul, a Plato reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and

judgment to come.

No one will deny that the life of the Greeks was stained with foul

vices, and that their theory sometimes fell to the level of their

practice. No one who believes that moral truth, like all truth, has

been gradually discovered, will wonder at this phenomenon. If moral

conduct is a function of social life, then, like other functions, it

will be subject, not only to growth, but also to disease and decay. An

intense and rapid intellectual development may have for its condition

a totally abnormal state of society, where certain vices, unknown to

ruder ages, spring up and flourish with rank luxuriance. When men have

to take women along with them on every new path of enquiry, progress

will be considerably retarded, although its benefits will ultimately

be shared among a greater number, and will be better insured against

the danger of a violent reaction. But the work that Hellas was

commissioned to perform could not wait; it had to be accomplished in

a few generations, or not at all. The barbarians were forcing their

way in on every side, not merely with the weight of invading armies,

but with the deadlier pressure of a benumbing superstition, with the

brute-worship of Egypt and the devil-worship of Phoenicia, with their

delirious orgies, their mutilations, their crucifixions, and their

gladiatorial contests. Already in the later dramas of Euripides and

in the Rhodian school of sculpture, we see the awful shadow coming

nearer, and feel the poisonous breath of Asia on our faces. Reason,

the reason by which these terrors have been for ever exorcised, could

only arrive at maturity under the influence of free and uninterrupted

discussion carried on by men among themselves in the gymnasium, the

agora, the ecclêsia, and the dicastery. The resulting and inevitable

separation of the sexes bred frightful disorders, which through all

changes of creed have clung like a moral pestilence to the shores of

the Aegean, and have helped to complicate political problems by joining

to religious hatred the fiercer animosity of physical disgust. But

whatever were the corruptions of Greek sentiment, Greek philosophy had

the power to purge them away. ‘Follow nature’ became the watchword

of one school after another; and a precept which at first may have

meant only that man should not fall below the brutes, was finally

so interpreted as to imply an absolute control of sense by reason.

No loftier standard of sexual purity has ever been inculcated than

that fixed by Plato in his latest work, the _Laws_. Isocrates bids

husbands set an example of conjugal fidelity to their wives. Socrates

had already declared that virtue was the same for both sexes. Xenophon

interests himself in the education of women. Plato would give them the

same training, and everywhere associate them in the same functions with

men. Equally decisive evidence of a theoretical opposition to slavery

is not forthcoming, and we know that it was unfortunately sanctioned by

Plato and Aristotle, in this respect no better inspired than the early

Christians; nevertheless, the germ of such an opposition existed, and

will hereafter be pointed out.

It has been said that the Greeks only worshipped beauty; that they

cultivated morality from the aesthetic side; that virtue was with

them a question, not of duty, but of taste. Some very strong texts

might be quoted in support of this judgment. For example, we find

Isocrates saying, in his encomium on Helen, that ‘Beauty is the first

of all things in majesty, and honour, and divineness. It is easy to

see its power: there are many things which have no share of courage,

or wisdom, or justice, which yet will be found honoured above things

which have each of these, but nothing which is devoid of beauty is

prized; all things are scorned which have not been given their part of

that attribute; the admiration for virtue itself comes to this, that

of all manifestations of life virtue is the most _beautiful_.’[44] And

Aristotle distinguishes the highest courage as willingness to die for

the καλόν. So also Plato describes philosophy as a love ‘that leads

one from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair

notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute

beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. And this is

that life beyond all others which man should live in the contemplation

of beauty absolute.’[45] Now, first of all, we must observe that, while

loveliness has been worshipped by many others, none have conceived

it under a form so worthy of worship as the Greeks. Beauty with them

was neither little, nor fragile, nor voluptuous; the soul’s energies

were not relaxed but exalted by its contemplation; there was in it an

element of austere and commanding dignity. The Argive Hêrê, though

revealed to us only through a softened Italian copy, has more divinity

in her countenance than any Madonna of them all; and the Melian

Aphroditê is distinguished by majesty of form not less than by purity

and sweetness of expression. This beauty was the unreserved information

of matter by mind, the visible rendering of absolute power, wisdom,

and goodness. Therefore, what a Greek worshipped was the perpetual

and ever-present energising of mind; but he forgot that beauty can

only exist as a combination of spirit with sense; and, after detaching

the higher element, he continued to call it by names and clothe it

in attributes proper to its earthly manifestations alone. Yet such

an extension of the aesthetic sentiment involved no weakening of the

moral fibre. A service comprehending all idealisms in one demanded the

self-effacement of a laborious preparation and the self-restraint of

a gradual achievement. They who pitched the goal of their aspiration

so high, knew that the paths leading up to it were rough, and steep,

and long; they felt that perfect workmanship and perfect taste, being

supremely precious, must be supremely difficult as well; χαλεπὰ τὰ

καλά they said, the beautiful is hard—hard to judge, hard to win,

and hard to keep. He who has passed through that stern discipline

need tremble at no other task; nor has duty anything to fear from a

companionship whose ultimate requirements are coincident with her own,

and the abandonment of which for a joyless asceticism can only lead to

the reappearance as an invading army of forces that should have been

cherished as indispensable allies.

It may be urged that beauty, however difficult of attainment or severe

in form, is, after all, essentially superficial; and that a morality

elaborated on the same principles will be equally superficial—will,

in fact, be little more than the art of keeping up appearances, of

displaying fine sentiments, of avoiding those actions the consequences

of which are immediately felt to be disagreeable, and, above all, of

not needlessly wounding anyone’s sensibilities. Such an imitation of

morality—which it would be a mistake to call hypocrisy—has no doubt

been common enough among all civilised nations; but there is no reason

to believe that it was in any way favoured by the circumstances of

Greek life. There is even evidence of a contrary tendency, as, indeed,

might be expected among a people whose most important states were saved

from the corrupting influences of a court. Where the sympathetic

admiration of shallow and excitable spectators is the effect chiefly

sought after, the showy virtues will be preferred to the solid, and the

appearance to the reality of all virtue; while brilliant and popular

qualities will be allowed to atone for the most atrocious crimes.

But, among the Greeks of the best period, courage and generosity rank

distinctly lower than temperance and justice; their poets and moralists

alike inculcate the preference of substance to show; and in no single

instance, so far as we can judge, did they, as modern nations often do,

for the sake of great achievements condone great wrongs. It was said of

a Greek and by a Greek that he did not wish to seem but to be just.[46]

We follow the judgment of the Greeks themselves in preferring Leonidas

to Pausanias, Aristeides to Themistocles, and Socrates to Alcibiades.

And we need only compare Epameinondas with David or Pericles with

Solomon as national heroes, to perceive at once how much nearer the two

Greeks come to our own standard of perfection, and how futile are the

charges sometimes brought against those from whose traditions we have

inherited their august and stainless fame.

Moreover, we have not here to consider what was the average level

of sentiment and practice among the Greeks; we have to study what

alone was of importance for the races which came under their tuition,

and that is the highest moral judgment to which they rose. Now, the

deliberate verdict of their philosophy on the relation between beauty

and virtue is contained in the following passage from Plato’s _Laws_:—

‘When anyone prefers beauty to virtue, what is this but the real and

utter dishonour of the soul? For such a preference implies that the

body is more honourable than the soul; and this is false, for there is

nothing of earthly birth which is more honourable than the heavenly,

and he who thinks otherwise of the soul has no idea how greatly he

undervalues this wonderful possession.’[47]

II.

Thus much for the current prejudices which seemed likely to interfere

with a favourable consideration of our subject. We have next to study

the conditions by which the form of Greek ethical philosophy was

originally determined. Foremost among these must be placed the moral

conceptions already current long before systematic reflection could

begin. What they were may be partly gathered from some wise saws

attributed by the Greeks themselves to their Seven Sages, but probably

current at a much earlier period. The pith of these maxims, taken

collectively, is to recommend the qualities attributed by our own

philosophic poet to his perfect woman:—

‘The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.’

We may say almost as briefly that they inculcate complete independence

both of our own passions and of external circumstances, with a

corresponding respect for the independence of others, to be shown by

using persuasion instead of force. Their tone will perhaps be best

understood by contrast with that collection of Hebrew proverbs which

has come down to us under the name of Solomon, but which Biblical

critics now attribute to a later period and a divided authorship. While

these regularly put forward material prosperity as the chief motive to

good conduct, Hellenic wisdom teaches indifference to the variations of

fortune. To a Greek, ‘the power that makes for righteousness,’ so far

from being, ‘not ourselves,’ was our own truest self, the far-seeing

reason which should guard us from elation and from depression, from

passion and from surprise. Instead of being offered old age as a

reward, we are told to be equally prepared for a long and for a short

life.

Two precepts stand out before all others, which, trivial as they

may seem, are uttered from the very soul of Greek experience, ‘Be

moderate,’ and, ‘Know thyself.’ Their joint observance constitutes the

characteristic virtue of Sôphrosynê, which means all that we understand

by temperance, and a great deal more besides; so much, in fact, that

very clever Greeks were hard set to define it, and very wise Greeks

could pray for it as the fairest gift of the gods.[48] Let us suppose

that each individual has a sphere of activity marked out for him by

his own nature and his special environment; then to discern clearly

the limits of that sphere and to keep within them would be Sôphrosynê,

while the discernment, taken alone, would be wisdom. The same

self-restraint operating as a check on interference with other spheres

would be justice; while the expansive force by which a man fills up

his entire sphere and guards it against aggressions may be called

courage. Thus we are enabled to comprehend the many-sided significance

of Sôphrosynê, to see how it could stand both for a particular virtue

and for all virtuousness whatever. We need only glance at Homer’s

poems, and in particular at the _Iliad_—a much deeper as well as a

more brilliant work than the _Odyssey_—to perceive how very early this

demand for moderation combined with self-knowledge had embodied itself

in Greek thought. Agamemnon violates the rights of Achilles under the

influence of immoderate passion, and through ignorance of how little

we can accomplish without the hero’s assistance. Achilles, again,

carries his vindictiveness too far, and suffers in consequence. But

his self-knowledge is absolutely perfect; conscious that he is first

in the field while others are better in council, he never undertakes

a task to which his powers are not fully adequate; nor does he enter

on his final work of vengeance without a clear consciousness of the

speedy death which its completion will entail on himself. Hector,

too, notwithstanding ominous forebodings, knows his duty and does it,

but with much less just an estimate of his own powers, leading him to

pursue his success too far, and then, when the tide has turned, not

permitting him to make a timely retreat within the walls of Troy. So

with the secondary characters. Patroclus also oversteps the limits

of moderation, and pays the penalty with his life. Diomed silently

bears the unmerited rebuke of Agamemnon, but afterwards recalls it at

a most effective moment, when rising to oppose the craven counsels

of the great king. This the Greeks called observing opportunity,

and opportunism was with them, as with French politicians, a form

of moderation.[49] Down at the very bottom of the scale Thersites

and Dolon are signal examples of men who do not know their sphere

and suffer for their folly. In the _Odyssey_, Odysseus is a nearly

perfect type of wisdom joined with self-control, erring, if we remember

rightly, only once, when he insults Polyphemus before the ship is out

of danger; while his comrades perish from want of these same gifts.

So far, virtue was with the Greeks what it must inevitably be with

all men at first, chiefly self-regarding, a refined form of prudence.

Moreover, other-regarding virtues gave less scope for reflection, being

originally comprehended under obedience to the law. But there were

two circumstances which could not long escape their notice; first,

that fraud and violence are often, at least apparently, profitable to

those who perpetrate them, a fact bitterly remarked by Hesiod;[50]

and secondly, that society cannot hold together without justice.

It was long before Governments grew up willing and able to protect

their subjects from mutual aggressions, nor does positive law create

morality, but implies it, and could not be worked without it. Nor could

international obligations be enforced by a superior tribunal; hence

they have remained down to the present day a fertile theme for ethical

discussion. It is at this point that morality forms a junction with

religion, the history of which is highly interesting, but which can

here be only briefly traced. The Olympian divinities, as placed before

us by Homer, are anything but moral. Their conduct towards each other

is that of a dissolute nobility; towards men it is that of unscrupulous

partisans and patrons. A loyal adherence to friends and gratitude for

sacrificial offerings are their most respectable characteristics,

raising them already a little above the nature-powers whence they were

derived. Now, mark how they first become moralised. It is by being made

witnesses to an oath. Any one who is called in to testify to a promise

feels aggrieved if it is broken, looking on the breach as an insult

to his own dignity. As the Third Commandment well puts it, his name

has been taken in vain. Thus it happened that the same gods who left

every other crime unpunished, visited perjury with severe and speedy

retribution, continued even after the offender’s death.[51] Respect for

a contract is the primary form of moral obligation, and still seems to

possess a peculiar hold over uneducated minds. We see every day how

many persons will abstain from actions which they know to be immoral

because they have given their word to that effect, not because the

actions themselves are wrong. And for that reason law courts would be

more willing to enforce contracts than to redress injuries. If, then,

one person inflicted damage on another, he might afterwards, in order

to escape retaliation from the injured party, or from his family,

engage to give satisfaction, and the court would compel him to redeem

his promise.[52] Thus contract, by procuring redress for every species

of wrong, would gradually extend its own obligatory character to

abstinence from injury in general, and the divine sanctions primarily

invoked on behalf of oaths would be extended, with them, over the whole

domain of moral conduct.

Nor was this all. Laws and justice once established would require

to have their origin accounted for, and, according to the usual

genealogical method of the early Greeks, would be described as children

of the gods, who would thus be interested in their welfare, and would

avenge their violation—a stage of reflection already reached in the

_Works and Days_ of Hesiod.

Again, when oracles like that at Delphi had obtained wide-spread

renown and authority, they would be consulted, not only on ceremonial

questions and matters of policy, but also on debateable points of

morality. The divine responses, being unbiassed by personal interest,

would necessarily be given in accordance with received rules of

rectitude, and would be backed by all the terrors of a supernatural

sanction. It might even be dangerous to assume that the god could

possibly give his support to wrong-doing. A story told by Herodotus

proves that such actually was the case.[E] There lived once at Sparta a

certain man named Glaucus, who had acquired so great a reputation for

probity that, during the troublous times of the Persian conquest, a

wealthy Milesian thought it advisable to deposit a large sum of money

with him for safe keeping. After a considerable time the money was

claimed by his children, but the honesty of Glaucus was not proof

against temptation. He pretended to have forgotten the whole affair,

and required a delay of three months before making up his mind with

regard to the validity of their demand. During that interval he

consulted the Delphic oracle to know whether he might possess himself

of the money by a false oath. The answer was that it would be for

his immediate advantage to do so; all must die, the faithful and the

perjured alike; but Horcus (oath) had a nameless son swift to pursue

without feet, strong to grasp without hands, who would destroy the

whole race of the sinner. Glaucus craved forgiveness, but was informed

that to tempt the god was equivalent to committing the crime. He went

home and restored the deposit, but his whole family perished utterly

from the land before three generations had passed by.

Yet another step remained to take. Punishment must be transferred from

a man’s innocent children to the man himself in a future life. But the

Olympian theology was, originally at least, powerless to effect this

revolution. Its gods, being personifications of celestial phenomena,

had nothing to do with the dark underworld whither men descended

after death. There existed, however, side by side with the brilliant

religion of courts and camps which Greek poetry has made so familiar

to us, another religion more popular with simple country-folk,[53] to

whom war meant ruin, courts of justice a means invented by kings for

exacting bribes, sea-voyages a senseless imprudence, chariot-racing a

sinful waste of money, and beautiful women drones in the human hive,

demons of extravagance invented by Zeus for the purpose of venting his

spite against mankind. What interest could these poor people take in

the resplendent guardians of their hereditary oppressors, in Hêrê and

Athênê, Apollo and Poseidôn, Artemis and Aphroditê? But they had other

gods peculiar to themselves, whose worship was wrapped in mystery,

partly that its objects need not be lured away by the attraction of

richer offerings elsewhere, partly because the activity of these

Chthonian deities, as they were called, was naturally associated with

darkness and secresy. Presiding over birth and death, over seed-time

and harvest and vintage, they personified the frost-bound sleep of

vegetation in winter and its return from a dark underworld in spring.

Out of their worship grew stories which told how Persephonê, the

fair daughter of Dêmêtêr, or Mother Earth, was carried away by Pluto

to reign with him over the shades below, but after long searching

was restored to her mother for eight months in every year; and how

Dionysus, the wine-god, was twice born, first from the earth burned up

and fainting under the intolerable fire of a summer sky, respectively

personified as Semelê and her lover Zeus, then from the protecting

mist wrapped round him by his divine father, of whom it formed a part.

Dionysus, too, was subject to alternations of depression and triumph,

from the recital of which Attic drama was developed, and gained a

footing in the infernal regions, whither we accompany him in the

_Frogs_ of Aristophanes. Another country god was Hermês, who seems to

have been associated with planting and possession as well as with the

demarcation and exchange of property, and who was also a conductor of

souls to Hades. Finally, there were the Erinyes, children of night and

dwellers in subterranean darkness; they could breed pestilence and

discord, but could also avert them; they could blast the produce of the

soil or increase its luxuriance and fertility; when blood was spilt on

the ground, they made it blossom up again in a harvest of retributive

hatred; they pursued the guilty during life, and did not relax their

grasp after death; all law, whether physical or moral, was under their

protection; the same Erinyes who, in the _Odyssey_, avenge on Oedipus

the suicide of his mother, in the _Iliad_ will not allow the miraculous

speaking of a horse to continue; and we have seen in the last chapter

how, according to Heracleitus, it is they who also prevent the sun

from transgressing his appointed limits.[54] Dêmêtêr and Persephonê,

too, seem to have been law-giving goddesses, as their great festival,

celebrated by women alone, was called the Thesmophoria, while eternal

happiness was promised to those who had been initiated into their

mysteries at Eleusis; and we also find that moral maxims were graven on

the marble busts of Hermês placed along every thoroughfare in Athens.

We can thus understand why the mutilation of these Hermae caused

such rage and terror, accompanied, as it was rumoured to be, by a

profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries; for any attack on the deities

in question would seem to prefigure an attack on the settled order of

things, the popular rights which they both symbolised and protected.

Here, then, we find, chiefly among the rustic population, a religion

intimately associated with morality, and including the doctrine of

retribution after death. But this simple faith, though well adapted

to the few wants of its original votaries, could not be raised to

the utmost expansion and purity of which it was susceptible without

being brought into vivifying contact with that other Olympian

religion which, as we have seen, belonged more peculiarly to the

ruling aristocracy. The poor may be more moral than the rich, and the

country than the town; nevertheless it is from dwellers in cities, and

from the higher classes, including as they do a large percentage of

educated, open-minded individuals, that the impulses to moral progress

always proceed. If the narrowness and hardness of primitive social

arrangements were overcome; if justice was disengaged from the ties

of blood-relationship, and tempered with consideration for inevitable

error; if deadly feuds were terminated by a habitual appeal to

arbitration; if the worship of one supreme ideal was substituted for a

blind sympathy with the ebb and flow of life on earth; if the numerical

strength of states was increased by giving shelter to fugitives; if a

Hellenic nation was created and held together by a common literature

and a common civilisation, by oracles accessible to all, and by

periodical games in which every free-born Greek could take part; and,

lastly, if a brighter abode than the slumberous garden of Persephonê

was assigned after death to the godlike heroes who had come forth

from a thrice repeated ordeal with souls unstained by sin;[55]—all

this was due to the military rather than to the industrial classes,

to the spirit that breathes through Homer rather than to the tamer

inspiration of Hesiod’s muse. But if justice was raised to an Olympian

throne; if righteous providence, no less than creative power, became

an inalienable attribute of Zeus; if lyric poetry, from Archilochus to

Simonides and Pindar, is one long hymn of prayer and praise ever turned

upward in adoring love to the Divine; we must remember that Themis

was a synonyme for Earth, and that Prometheus, the original friend

of humanity, for whose benefit he invented every useful art, augury

included, was her son. The seeds of immortal hope were first planted

in the fructifying bosom of Dêmêtêr, and life, a forsaken Ariadnê,

took refuge in the mystical embraces of Dionysus from the memory of a

promise that had allured her to betray. Thus, we may conjecture that

between hall and farm-house, between the Olympian and the Chthonian

religions, there was a constant reaction going on, during which ethical

ideas were continually expanding, and extricating themselves from the

superstitious elements associated with their earliest theological

expression.

III.

This process was conceived by Aeschylus as a conflict between two

generations of gods, ending with their complete reconciliation. In the

_Prometheus Bound_ we have the commencement of the conflict, in the

_Eumenides_ its close. Our sympathies are apparently at first intended

to be enlisted on behalf of the older divinities, but at last are

claimed exclusively by the younger. As opposed to Prometheus, Zeus is

evidently in the wrong, and seeks to make up for his deficiencies by

arbitrary violence. In the _Oresteia_ he is the champion of justice

against iniquity, and through his interpreter, Apollo, he enforces a

revised moral code against the antiquated claims of the Erinyes; these

latter, however, ultimately consenting to become guardians of the new

social order. The Aeschylean drama shows us Greek religion at the

highest level it could reach, unaided by philosophical reflection.

With Sophocles a perceptible decline has already begun. We are loth to

say anything that may sound like disparagement of so noble a poet. We

yield to none in admiration for one who has combined the two highest

qualities of art—sweetness and strength—more completely than any

other singer, Homer alone excepted, and who has given the primordial

affections their definitive expression for all time. But we cannot

help perceiving an element of superstition in his dramas, which,

so far, distinguishes them unfavourably from those of his Titanic

predecessor. With Sophocles, when the gods interfere, it is to punish

disrespect towards themselves, not to enforce justice between man and

man. Ajax perishes by his own hand because he has neglected to ask

for divine assistance in battle. Laius and Jocastê come to a tragic

end through disobedience to a perfectly arbitrary oracle; and as a

part of the same divine purpose Oedipus encounters the most frightful

calamities by no fault of his own. The gods are, moreover, exclusively

objects of fear; their sole business is to enforce the fulfilment of

enigmatic prophecies; they give no assistance to the pious and virtuous

characters. Antigonê is allowed to perish for having performed the last

duties to her brother’s corpse. Neoptolemus receives no aid in that

struggle between ambition on the one hand with truthfulness and pity

on the other which makes his character one of the most interesting in

all imaginative literature. When Athênê bids Odysseus exult over the

degradation of Ajax, the generous Ithacan refuses to her face, and

falls back on the consciousness of a common humanity uniting him in

sympathy with his prostrate foe.

The rift within the lute went on widening till all its music was turned

to jarring discord. With the third great Attic dramatist we arrive at

a period of complete dissolution. Morality is not only separated from

mythological tradition, but is openly at war with it. Religious belief,

after becoming almost monotheistic, has relapsed into polytheism. With

Euripides the gods do not, as with his predecessors, form a common

council. They lead an independent existence, not interfering with each

other, and pursuing private ends of their own—often very disreputable

ones. Aphrodite inspires Phaedra with an incestuous passion for her

stepson. Artemis is propitiated by human sacrifices. Hêrê causes

Heraclês to kill his children in a fit of delirium. Zeus and Poseidôn

are charged with breaking their own laws, and setting a bad example to

mortals. Apollo, once so venerated, fares the worst of any. He outrages

a noble maiden, and succeeds in palming off her child on the man whom

she subsequently marries. He instigates the murder of a repentant enemy

who has come to seek forgiveness at his shrine. He fails to protect

Orestes from the consequences of matricide, committed at his own

unwise suggestion. Political animosity may have had something to do

with these attacks on a god who was believed to side with the Dorian

confederacy against Athens. Doubtless, also, Euripides disbelieved many

of the scandalous stories which he selected as appropriate materials

for dramatic representation. But a satire on immoral beliefs would

have been unnecessary had they not been generally accepted. Nor was

the poet himself altogether a freethinker. One of his latest and most

splendid works, the _Bacchae_, is a formal submission to the orthodox

creed. Under the stimulus of an insane delusion, Pentheus is torn

to pieces by his mother Agavê and her attendant Maenads, for having

presumed to oppose the introduction of Dionysus-worship into Thebes.

The antecedents of the new divinity are questionable, and the nature of

his influence on the female population extremely suspicious. Yet much

stress is laid on the impiety of Pentheus, and we are clearly intended

to consider his fate as well-deserved.

Euripides is not a true thinker, and for that very reason fitly

typifies a period when religion had been shaken to its very foundation,

but still retained a strong hold on men’s minds, and might at any time

reassert its ancient authority with unexpected vigour. We gather, also,

from his writings, that ethical sentiment had undergone a parallel

transformation. He introduces characters and actions which the elder

dramatists would have rejected as unworthy of tragedy, and not only

introduces them, but composes elaborate speeches in their defence. Side

by side with examples of devoted heroism we find such observations as

that everyone loves himself best, and that those are most prosperous

who attend most exclusively to their own interests. It so happens that

in one instance where Euripides has chosen a subject already handled

by Aeschylus, the difference of treatment shows how great a moral

revolution had occurred in the interim. The conflict waged between

Eteoclês and Polyneicês for their father’s throne is the theme both

of the _Seven against Thebes_ and of the _Phoenician Women_. In both,

Polyneicês bases his claim on grounds of right. It had been agreed that

he and his brother should alternately hold sway over Thebes. His turn

has arrived, and Eteoclês refuses to give way. Polyneicês endeavours

to enforce his pretensions by bringing a foreign army against Thebes.

Aeschylus makes him appear before the walls with an allegorical figure

of Justice on his shield, promising to restore him to his father’s

seat. On hearing this, Eteoclês exclaims:—

‘Aye, if Jove’s virgin daughter Justice shared

In deed or thought of his, then it might be.

But neither when he left the darkling womb,

Nor in his childhood, nor in youth, nor when

The clustering hair first gathered round his chin,

Hath Justice turned approving eyes on him;

Nor deem I that she comes as his ally,

Now that he wastes his native land with war,

Or Justice most unjustly were she called

If ruthless hearts could claim her fellowship.’[56]

Euripides, with greater dramatic skill, brings the two brothers

together in presence of their mother, Jocastê. When Polyneicês has

spoken, Eteoclês replies:—

‘Honour and wisdom are but empty names

That mortals use, each with a different meaning,

Agreeing in the sound, not in the sense.

Hear, mother, undisguised my whole resolve!

Were Sovereignty, chief goddess among gods,

Far set as is the rising of a star,

Or buried deep in subterranean gloom,

There I would seek and win her for mine own.

* * * * *

Come fire, come sword, yoke horses to the car,

And fill the plain with armed men, for I

Will not give up my royalty to him!

Let all my life be guiltless save in this:

I dare do any wrong for sovereign power—

The splendid guerdon of a splendid sin.’[57]

The contrast is not only direct, but designed, for Euripides had the

work of his predecessor before him, and no doubt imagined that he was

improving on it.

We perceive a precisely similar change of tone on comparing the two

great historians who have respectively recorded the struggle of Greece

against Persia, and the struggle of imperial Athens against Sparta

and her allies. Though born within fifteen years of one another,

Herodotus and Thucydides are virtually separated by an interval of two

generations, for while the latter represents the most advanced thought

of his time, the former lived among traditions inherited from the

age preceding his own. Now, Herodotus is not more remarkable for the

earnest piety than for the clear sense of justice which runs through

his entire work. He draws no distinction between public and private

morality. Whoever makes war on his neighbours without provocation, or

rules without the consent of the governed, is, according to him, in

the wrong, although he is well aware that such wrongs are constantly

committed. Thucydides knows nothing of supernatural interference in

human affairs. After relating the tragical end of Nicias, he observes,

not without a sceptical tendency, that of all the Greeks then living,

this unfortunate general least deserved such a fate, so far as piety

and respectability of character went. If there are gods they hold

their position by superior strength. That the strong should enslave

the weak is a universal and necessary law of Nature. The Spartans,

who among themselves are most scrupulous in observing traditional

obligations, in their dealings with others most openly identify gain

with honour, and expediency with right. Even if the historian himself

did not share these opinions, it is evident that they were widely

entertained by his contemporaries, and he expressly informs us that

Greek political morality had deteriorated to a frightful extent in

consequence of the civil discords fomented by the conflict between

Athens and Sparta; while, in Athens at least, a similar corruption of

private morality had begun with the great plague of 430, its chief

symptom being a mad desire to extract the utmost possible enjoyment

from life, for which purpose every means was considered legitimate. On

this point Thucydides is confirmed and supplemented by the evidence of

another contemporary authority. According to Aristophanes, the ancient

discipline had in his time become very much relaxed. The rich were idle

and extravagant; the poor mutinous; young men were growing more and

more insolent to their elders; religion was derided; all classes were

animated by a common desire to make money and to spend it on sensual

enjoyment. Only, instead of tracing back this profound demoralisation

to a change in the social environment, Aristophanes attributes it to

demagogues, harassing informers, and popular poets, but above all to

the new culture then coming into vogue. Physical science had brought

in atheism; dialectic training had destroyed the sanctity of ethical

restraints. When, however, the religious and virtuous Socrates is put

forward as a type of both tendencies, our confidence in the comic

poet’s accuracy, if not in his good faith, becomes seriously shaken;

and his whole tone so vividly recalls the analogous invectives now

hurled from press and pulpit against every philosophic theory, every

scientific discovery, every social reform at variance with traditional

beliefs or threatening the sinister interests which have gathered round

iniquitous institutions, that at first we feel tempted to follow Grote

in rejecting his testimony altogether. So far, however, as the actual

phenomena themselves are concerned, and apart from their generating

antecedents, Aristophanes does but bring into more picturesque

prominence what graver observers are content to indicate, and what

Plato, writing a generation later, treats as an unquestionable reality.

Nor is the fact of a lowered moral tone going along with accelerated

mental activity either incredible or unparalleled. Modern history

knows of at least two periods remarkable for such a conjunction,

the Renaissance and the eighteenth century, the former stained with

every imaginable crime, the latter impure throughout, and lapsing

into blood-thirsty violence at its close. Moral progress, like every

other mode of motion, has its appropriate rhythm—its epochs of severe

restraint followed by epochs of rebellious license. And when, as an

aggravation of the reaction from which they periodically suffer,

ethical principles have become associated with a mythology whose decay,

at first retarded, is finally hastened by their activity, it is still

easier to understand how they may share in its discredit, and only

regain their ascendency by allying themselves with a purified form of

the old religion, until they can be disentangled from the compromising

support of all unverified theories whatever. We have every reason to

believe that Greek life and thought did pass through such a crisis

during the second half of the fifth century B.C., and we have now to

deal with the speculative aspects of that crisis, so far as they are

represented by the Sophists.

IV.

The word Sophist in modern languages means one who purposely uses

fallacious arguments. Our definition was probably derived from that

given by Aristotle in his _Topics_, but does not entirely reproduce

it. What we call sophistry was with him eristic, or the art of unfair

disputation; and by Sophist he means one who practises the eristic

art for gain. He also defines sophistry as the appearance without the

reality of wisdom. A very similar account of the Sophists and their

art is given by Plato in what seems to be one of his later dialogues;

and another dialogue, probably composed some time previously, shows

us how eristic was actually practised by two Sophists, Euthydêmus and

Dionysodôrus, who had learned the art, which is represented as a very

easy accomplishment, when already old men. Their performance is not

edifying; and one only wonders how any Greek could have been induced to

pay for the privilege of witnessing such an exhibition. But the word

Sophist, in its original signification, was an entirely honourable

name. It meant a sage, a wise and learned man, like Solon, or, for that

matter, like Plato and Aristotle themselves. The interval between these

widely-different connotations is filled up and explained by a number

of individuals as to whom our information is principally, though by

no means entirely, derived from Plato. All of them were professional

teachers, receiving payment for their services; all made a particular

study of language, some aiming more particularly at accuracy, others

at beauty of expression. While no common doctrine can be attributed

to them as a class, as individuals they are connected by a series of

graduated transitions, the final outcome of which will enable us to

understand how, from a title of respect, their name could be turned

into a byword of reproach. The Sophists, concerning whom some details

have been transmitted to us, are Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus,

Hippias, Pôlus, Thrasymachus, and the Eristics already mentioned.

We have placed them, so far as their ages can be determined, in

chronological order, but their logical order is somewhat different.

The first two on the list were born about 480 B.C., and the second

pair possibly twenty years later. But neither Protagoras nor Gorgias

seems to have published his most characteristic theories until a

rather advanced time of life, for they are nowhere alluded to by the

Xenophontic Socrates, who, on the other hand, is well acquainted with

both Prodicus and Hippias, while, conversely, Plato is most interested

in the former pair. We shall also presently see that the scepticism

of the elder Sophists can best be explained by reference to the more

dogmatic theories of their younger contemporaries, which again easily

fit on to the physical speculations of earlier thinkers.

Prodicus was born in Ceos, a little island belonging to the Athenian

confederacy, and seems to have habitually resided at Athens. His

health was delicate, and he wrapped up a good deal, as we learn from

the ridicule of Plato, always pitiless to a valetudinarian.[F] Judging

from two allusions in Aristophanes, he taught natural science in

such a manner as to conciliate even that unsparing enemy of the

new learning.[58] He also gave moral instruction grounded on the

traditional ideas of his country, a pleasing specimen of which

has been preserved. It is conveyed under the form of an apologue,

entitled the Choice of Heraclês, and was taken down in its present

form by Xenophon from the lips of Socrates, who quoted it, with full

approval, for the benefit of his own disciples. Prodicus also lectured

on the use of words, laying especial emphasis on the distinction of

synonyms. We hear, not without sympathy, that he tried to check the

indiscriminate employment of ‘awful’ (δεινός), which was even more rife

at Athens than among ourselves.[G] Finally, we are told that, like many

moderns, he considered the popular divinities to be personifications

of natural phenomena. Hippias, who was a native of Elis, seems to

have taught on very much the same system. It would appear that he

lectured principally on astronomy and physics, but did not neglect

language, and is said to have invented an art of memory. His restless

inquisitiveness was also exercised on ancient history, and his

erudition in that subject was taxed to the utmost during a visit to

Sparta, where the unlettered people still delighted in old stories,

which among the more enlightened Greeks had been superseded by topics

of livelier and fresher interest. At Sparta, too, he recited, with

great applause, an ethical discourse under the form of advice given

by Nestor to Neoptolemus after the capture of Troy. We know, on good

authority, that Hippias habitually distinguished between natural and

customary law, the former being, according to him, everywhere the

same, while the latter varied from state to state, and in the same

state at different times. Natural law he held to be alone binding and

alone salutary. On this subject the following expressions, evidently

intended to be characteristic, are put into his mouth by Plato:—‘All

of you who are here present I reckon to be kinsmen and friends and

fellow-citizens, by nature and not by law; for by nature like is akin

to like, whereas law is the tyrant of mankind, and often compels us to

do many things which are against Nature.’[59] Here two distinct ideas

are implied, the idea that Nature is a moral guide, and, further,

the idea that she is opposed to convention. The habit of looking for

examples and lessons to some simpler life than their own prevailed

among the Greeks from a very early period, and is, indeed, very common

in primitive societies. Homer’s similes are a case in point; while all

that we are told about the innocence and felicity of the Aethiopians

and Hyperboreans seems to indicate a deep-rooted belief in the moral

superiority of savage to civilised nations; and Hesiod’s fiction of

the Four Ages, beginning with a golden age, arises from a kindred

notion that intellectual progress is accompanied by moral corruption.

Simonides of Amorgus illustrates the various types of womankind by

examples from the animal world; and Aesop’s fables, dating from the

first half of the sixth century, give ethical instruction under the

same disguise. We have already pointed out how Greek rural religion

established a thorough-going connexion between physical and moral

phenomena, and how Heracleitus followed in the same track. Now, one

great result of early Greek thought, as described in our first chapter,

was to combine all these scattered fugitive incoherent ideas under a

single conception, thus enabling them to elucidate and support one

another. This was the conception of Nature as a universal all-creative

eternal power, first superior to the gods, then altogether superseding

them. When Homer called Zeus the father of gods and men; when Pindar

said that both races, the divine and the human, are sprung from one

mother (Earth);[60] when, again, he spoke of law as an absolute king;

or when Aeschylus set destiny above Zeus himself;[61] they were but

foreshadowing a more despotic authority, whose dominion is even now not

extinct, is perhaps being renewed under the title of Evolution. The

word Nature was used by most philosophers, and the thing was implied

by all. They did not, indeed, commit the mistake of personifying a

convenient abstraction; but a conception which they substituted for the

gods would soon inherit every attribute of divine agency. Moreover,

the Nature of philosophy had three fundamental attributes admitting of

ready application as ethical standards. She was everywhere the same;

fire burned in Greece and Persia alike. She tended towards an orderly

system where every agent or element is limited to its appropriate

sphere. And she proceeded on a principle of universal compensation,

all gains in one direction being paid for by losses in another, and

every disturbance being eventually rectified by a restoration of

equilibrium. It was, indeed, by no means surprising that truths which

were generalised from the experience of Greek social life should now

return to confirm the orderliness of that life with the sanction of an

all-pervading law.

Euripides gives us an interesting example of the style in which this

ethical application of physical science could be practised. We have

seen how Eteoclês expresses his determination to do and dare all for

the sake of sovereign power. His mother, Jocastê, gently rebukes him as

follows:—

‘Honour Equality who binds together

Both friends and cities and confederates,

For equity is law, law equity;

The lesser is the greater’s enemy,

And disadvantaged aye begins the strife.

From her our measures, weights, and numbers come,

Defined and ordered by Equality;

So do the night’s blind eye and sun’s bright orb

Walk equal courses in their yearly round,

And neither is embittered by defeat;

And while both light and darkness serve mankind

Wilt thou not bear an equal in thy house?’[62]

On examining the apologue of Prodicus, we find it characterised by

a somewhat similar style of reasoning. There is, it is true, no

reference to physical phenomena, but Virtue dwells strongly on the

truth that nothing can be had for nothing, and that pleasure must

either be purchased by toil or atoned for by languor, satiety, and

premature decay. We know also that the Cynical school, as represented

by Antisthenês, rejected all pleasure on the ground that it was always

paid for by an equal amount of pain; and Heraclês, the Prodicean type

of a youth who follows virtue in preference to vice disguised as

happiness, was also the favourite hero of the Cynics. Again, Plato

alludes, in the _Philêbus_, to certain thinkers, reputed to be ‘great

on the subject of physics,’ who deny the very existence of pleasure.

Critics have been at a loss to identify these persons, and rather

reluctantly put up with the explanation that Antisthenês and his school

are referred to. Antisthenês was a friend of Prodicus, and may at one

time have shared in his scientific studies, thus giving occasion to

the association touched on by Plato. But is it not equally possible

that Prodicus left behind disciples who, like him, combined moral with

physical teaching; and, going a little further, may we not conjecture

that their opposition to Hedonism was inherited from the master

himself, who, like the Stoics afterwards, may have based it on an

application of physical reasoning to ethics?

Still more important was the antithesis between Nature and convention,

which, so far as we know, originated exclusively with Hippias. We

have already observed that universality and necessity were, with

the Greeks, standing marks of naturalness. The customs of different

countries were, on the other hand, distinguished by extreme variety,

amounting sometimes to diametrical opposition. Herodotus was fond

of calling attention to such contrasts; only, he drew from them the

conclusion that law, to be so arbitrary, must needs possess supreme

and sacred authority. According to the more plausible interpretation

of Hippias, the variety, and at least in Greek democracies, the

changeability of law proved that it was neither sacred nor binding.

He also looked on artificial social institutions as the sole cause of

division and discord among mankind. Here we already see the dawn of a

cosmopolitanism afterwards preached by Cynic and Stoic philosophers.

Furthermore, to discover the natural rule of right, he compared the

laws of different nations, and selected those which were held by

all in common as the basis of an ethical system.[63] Now, this is

precisely what was done by the Roman jurists long afterwards under

the inspiration of Stoical teaching. We have it on the high authority

of Sir Henry Maine that they identified the _Jus Gentium_, that is,

the laws supposed to be observed by all nations alike, with the _Jus

Naturale_, that is, the code by which men were governed in their

primitive condition of innocence. It was by a gradual application of

this ideal standard that the numerous inequalities between different

classes of persons, enforced by ancient Roman law, were removed, and

that contract was substituted for status. Above all, the abolition of

slavery was, if not directly caused, at any rate powerfully aided,

by the belief that it was against Nature. At the beginning of the

fourteenth century we find Louis Hutin, King of France, assigning

as a reason for the enfranchisement of his serfs, that, ‘according

to natural law, everybody ought to be born free,’ and although Sir

H. Maine holds this to have been a mistaken interpretation of the

juridical axiom ‘omnes homines naturâ aequales sunt,’ which means

not an ideal to be attained, but a primitive condition from which we

have departed: nevertheless it very faithfully reproduces the theory

of those Greek philosophers from whom the idea of a natural law was

derived. That, in Aristotle’s time at least, a party existed who were

opposed to slavery on theoretical grounds of right is perfectly evident

from the language of the _Politics_. ‘Some persons,’ says Aristotle,

‘think that slave-holding is against nature, for that one man is a

slave and another free by law, while by nature there is no difference

between them, for which reason it is unjust as being the result of

force.’[64] And he proceeds to prove the contrary at length. The same

doctrine of natural equality led to important political consequences,

having, again according to Sir H. Maine, contributed both to the

American Declaration of Independence and to the French Revolution.

There is one more aspect deserving our attention, under which the

theory of Nature has been presented both in ancient and modern times.

A dialogue which, whether rightly or wrongly attributed to Plato, may

be taken as good evidence on the subject it relates to,[65] exhibits

Hippias in the character of a universal genius, who can not only

teach every science and practise every kind of literary composition,

but has also manufactured all the clothes and other articles about

his person. Here we have precisely the sort of versatility which

characterises uncivilised society, and which believers in a state of

nature love to encourage at all times. The division of labour, while

it carries us ever farther from barbarism, makes us more dependent on

each other. An Odysseus is master of many arts, a Themistocles of two,

a Demosthenes of only one. A Norwegian peasant can do more for himself

than an English countryman, and therefore makes a better colonist. If

we must return to Nature, our first step should be to learn a number

of trades, and so be better able to shift for ourselves. Such was the

ideal of Hippias, and it was also the ideal of the eighteenth century.

Its literature begins with _Robinson Crusoe_, the story of a man who

is accidentally compelled to provide himself, during many years, with

all the necessaries of life. Its educational manuals are, in France,

Rousseau’s _Émile_; in England, Day’s _Sandford and Merton_, both

teaching that the young should be thrown as much as possible on their

own resources. One of its types is Diderot, who learns handicrafts that

he may describe them in the _Encyclopédie_. Its two great spokesmen

are Voltaire and Goethe, who, after cultivating every department

of literature, take in statesmanship as well. And its last word is

Schiller’s _Letters on Aesthetic Culture_, holding up totality of

existence as the supreme ideal to be sought after.

There is no reason to believe that Hippias used his distinction between

Nature and convention as an argument for despotism. It would rather

appear that, if anything, he and his school desired to establish a more

complete equality among men. Others, however, both rhetoricians and

practical statesmen, were not slow to draw an opposite conclusion. They

saw that where no law was recognised, as between different nations,

nothing but violence and the right of the stronger prevailed. It was

once believed that aggressions which human law could not reach found

no favour with the gods, and dread of the divine displeasure may have

done something towards restraining them. But religion had partly been

destroyed by the new culture, partly perverted into a sanction for

wrong-doing. By what right, it was asked, did Zeus himself reign? Had

he not unlawfully dethroned his father, Cronos, and did he not now hold

power simply by virtue of superior strength? Similar reasonings were

soon applied to the internal government of each state. It was alleged

that the ablest citizens could lay claim to uncontrolled supremacy by

a title older than any social fiction. Rules of right meant nothing

but a permanent conspiracy of the weak to withdraw themselves from the

legitimate dominion of their born master, and to bamboozle him into

a voluntary surrender of his natural privileges. Sentiments bearing

a superficial resemblance to these have occasionally found utterance

among ourselves. Nevertheless, it would be most unjust to compare

Carlyle and Mr. Froude with Critias and Calliclês. We believe that

their preference of despotism to representative government is an entire

mistake. But we know that with them as with us the good of the governed

is the sole end desired. The gentlemen of Athens sought after supreme

power only as a means for gratifying their worst passions without let

or hindrance; and for that purpose they were ready to ally themselves

with every foreign enemy in turn, or to flatter the caprices of the

Dêmos, if that policy promised to answer equally well. The antisocial

theories of these ‘young lions,’ as they were called by their enemies

and sometimes by themselves also, do not seem to have been supported

by any public teacher. If we are to believe Plato, Pôlus, a Sicilian

rhetor, did indeed regard Archelaus, the abler Louis Napoleon of his

time, with sympathy and envious admiration, but without attempting

to justify the crimes of his hero by an appeal to natural law. The

corruption of theoretical morality among the paid teachers took a more

subtle form. Instead of opposing one principle to another, they held

that all law had the same source, being an emanation from the will

of the stronger, and exclusively designed to promote his interest.

Justice, according to Thrasymachus in the _Republic_, is another’s

good, which is true enough, and to practise it except under compulsion

is foolish, which, whatever Grote may say, is a grossly immoral

doctrine.

V.

We have seen how the idea of Nature, first evolved by physical

philosophy, was taken by some, at least, among the Sophists as a

basis for their ethical teaching; then how an interpretation utterly

opposed to theirs was put on it by practical men, and how this second

interpretation was so generalised by the younger rhetoricians as to

involve the denial of all morality whatever. Meanwhile, another equally

important conception, destined to come into speedy and prolonged

antagonism with the idea of Nature, and like it to exercise a powerful

influence on ethical reflection, had almost contemporaneously been

elaborated out of the materials which earlier speculation supplied.

From Parmenides and Heracleitus down, every philosopher who had

propounded a theory of the world, had also more or less peremptorily

insisted on the fact that his theory differed widely from common

belief. Those who held that change is impossible, and those who

taught that everything is incessantly changing; those who asserted the

indestructibility of matter, and those who denied its continuity; those

who took away objective reality from every quality except extension

and resistance, and those who affirmed that the smallest molecules

partook more or less of every attribute that is revealed to sense—all

these, however much they might disagree among themselves, agreed in

declaring that the received opinions of mankind were an utter delusion.

Thus, a sharp distinction came to be drawn between the misleading

sense-impressions and the objective reality to which thought alone

could penetrate. It was by combining these two elements, sensation

and thought, that the idea of mind was originally constituted. And

mind when so understood could not well be accounted for by any of the

materialistic hypotheses at first proposed. The senses must differ

profoundly from that of which they give such an unfaithful report;

while reason, which Anaxagoras had so carefully differentiated from

every other form of existence, carried back its distinction to the

subjective sphere, and became clothed with a new spirituality when

reintegrated in the consciousness of man.

The first result of this separation between man and the world was a

complete breach with the old physical philosophy, shown, on the one

hand, by an abandonment of speculative studies, on the other, by a

substitution of convention for Nature as the recognised standard of

right. Both consequences were drawn by Protagoras, the most eminent

of the Sophists. We have now to consider more particularly what was

his part in the great drama of which we are attempting to give an

intelligible account.

Protagoras was born about 480 B.C. He was a fellow-townsman of

Democritus, and has been represented, though not on good authority,

as a disciple of that illustrious thinker. It was rather by a study

of Heracleitus that his philosophical opinions, so far as they were

borrowed from others, seem to have been most decisively determined.

In any case, practice, not theory, was the principal occupation of

his life. He gave instruction for payment in the higher branches of a

liberal education, and adopted the name of Sophist, which before had

simply meant a wise man, as an honourable title for his new calling.

Protagoras was a very popular teacher. The news of his arrival in a

strange city excited immense enthusiasm, and he was followed from place

to place by a band of eager disciples. At Athens he was honoured by

the friendship of such men as Pericles and Euripides. It was at the

house of the great tragic poet that he read out a work beginning with

the ominous declaration, ‘I cannot tell whether the gods exist or not;

life is too short for such difficult investigations.’[66] Athenian

bigotry took alarm directly. The book containing this frank confession

of agnosticism was publicly burned, all purchasers being compelled to

give up the copies in their possession. The author himself was either

banished or took flight, and perished by shipwreck on the way to Sicily

before completing his seventieth year.

The scepticism of Protagoras went beyond theology and extended to all

science whatever. Such, at least, seems to have been the force of his

celebrated declaration that ‘man is the measure of all things, both

as regards their existence and their non-existence.’[67] According to

Plato, this doctrine followed from the identification of knowledge

with sensible perception, which in its turn was based on a modified

form of the Heracleitean theory of a perpetual flux. The series of

external changes which constitutes Nature, acting on the series of

internal changes which constitutes each man’s personality, produces

particular sensations, and these alone are the true reality. They vary

with every variation in the factors, and therefore are not the same

for separate individuals. Each man’s perceptions are true for himself,

but for himself alone. Plato easily shows that such a theory of truth

is at variance with ordinary opinion, and that if all opinions are

true, it must necessarily stand self-condemned. We may also observe

that if nothing can be known but sensation, nothing can be known of

its conditions. It would, however, be unfair to convict Protagoras of

talking nonsense on the unsupported authority of the _Theaetêtus_.

Plato himself suggests that a better case might have been made out

for the incriminated doctrine could its author have been heard in

self-defence. We may conjecture that Protagoras did not distinguish

very accurately between existence, knowledge, and applicability to

practice. If we assume, what there seems good reason to believe, that

in the great controversy of Nature _versus_ Law, Protagoras sided with

the latter, his position will at once become clear. When the champions

of Nature credited her with a stability and an authority greater than

could be claimed for merely human arrangements, it was a judicious step

to carry the war into their territory, and ask, on what foundation then

does Nature herself stand? Is not she, too, perpetually changing, and

do we not become acquainted with her entirely through our own feelings?

Ought not those feelings to be taken as the ultimate standard in all

questions of right and wrong? Individual opinion is a fact which must

be reckoned with, but which can be changed by persuasion, not by

appeals to something that we none of us know anything about. _Man_ is

the measure of all things, not the will of gods whose very existence

is uncertain, nor yet a purely hypothetical state of Nature. Human

interests must take precedence of every other consideration. Hector

meant nothing else when he preferred the obvious dictates of patriotism

to inferences drawn from the flight of birds.

We now understand why Protagoras, in the Platonic dialogue bearing his

name, should glance scornfully at the method of instruction pursued by

Hippias, with his lectures on astronomy, and why he prefers to discuss

obscure passages in the poets. The quarrel between a classical and a

scientific education was just then beginning, and Protagoras, as a

Humanist, sided with the classics. Again, he does not think much of

the ‘great and sane and noble race of brutes.’ He would not, like the

Cynics, take them as examples of conduct. Man, he says, is naturally

worse provided for than any animal; even the divine gift of wisdom

would not save him from extinction without the priceless social virtues

of justice and reverence, that is, the regard for public opinion

which Mr. Darwin, too, has represented as the strongest moralising

power in primitive society. And, as the possession of these qualities

constituted the fundamental distinction between men and brutes, so also

did the advantage of civilisation over barbarism rest on their superior

development, a development due to the ethical instruction received by

every citizen from his earliest infancy, reinforced through after-life

by the sterner correction of legal punishments, and completed by the

elimination of all individuals demonstrably unfitted for the social

state. Protagoras had no sympathy with those who affect to prefer the

simplicity of savages to the fancied corruption of civilisation. Hear

how he answers the Rousseaus and Diderots of his time:—

‘I would have you consider that he who appears to you to be the worst

of those who have been brought up in laws and humanities would appear

to be a just man and a master of justice if he were to be compared

with men who had no education, or courts of justice, or laws, or any

restraints upon them which compelled them to practise virtue—with

the savages, for example, whom the poet Pherecrates exhibited on the

stage at the last year’s Lenaean festival. If you were living among

men such as the man-haters in his chorus, you would be only too glad

to meet with Eurybates and Phrynondas, and you would sorrowfully long

to revisit the rascality of this part of the world.’[68]

We find the same theory reproduced and enforced with weighty

illustrations by the great historian of that age. It is not known

whether Thucydides owed any part of his culture to Protagoras, but

the introduction to his history breathes the same spirit as the

observations which we have just transcribed. He, too, characterises

antiquity as a scene of barbarism, isolation, and lawless violence,

particularly remarking that piracy was not then counted a dishonourable

profession. He points to the tribes outside Greece, together with the

most backward among the Greeks themselves, as representing the low

condition from which Athens and her sister states had only emerged

within a comparatively recent period. And in the funeral oration which

he puts into the mouth of Pericles, the legendary glories of Athens

are passed over without the slightest allusion,[69] while exclusive

prominence is given to her proud position as the intellectual centre of

Greece. Evidently a radical change had taken place in men’s conceptions

since Herodotus wrote. They were learning to despise the mythical

glories of their ancestors, to exalt the present at the expense of the

past, to fix their attention exclusively on immediate human interests,

and, possibly, to anticipate the coming of a loftier civilisation than

had as yet been seen.

The evolution of Greek tragic poetry bears witness to the same

transformation of taste. On comparing Sophocles with Aeschylus, we

are struck by a change of tone analogous to that which distinguishes

Thucydides from Herodotus. It has been shown in our first chapter how

the elder dramatist delights in tracing events and institutions back to

their first origin, and in following derivations through the steps of

a genealogical sequence. Sophocles, on the other hand, limits himself

to a close analysis of the action immediately represented, the motives

by which his characters are influenced, and the arguments by which

their conduct is justified or condemned. We have already touched on the

very different attitude assumed towards religion by these two great

poets. Here we have only to add that while Aeschylus fills his dramas

with supernatural beings, and frequently restricts his mortal actors

to the interpretation or execution of a divine mandate, Sophocles,

representing the spirit of Greek Humanism, only once brings a god on

the stage, and dwells exclusively on the emotions of pride, ambition,

revenge, terror, pity, and affection, by which men and women of a lofty

type are actuated. Again (and this is one of his poetic superiorities),

Aeschylus has an open sense for the external world; his imagination

ranges far and wide from land to land; his pages are filled with the

fire and light, the music and movement of Nature in a Southern country.

He leads before us in splendid procession the starry-kirtled night;

the bright rulers that bring round winter and summer; the dazzling

sunshine; the forked flashes of lightning; the roaring thunder; the

white-winged snow-flakes; the rain descending on thirsty flowers; the

sea now rippling with infinite laughter, now moaning on the shingle,

growing hoary under rough blasts, with its eastern waves dashing

against the new-risen sun, or, again, lulled to waveless, windless,

noonday sleep; the volcano with its volleys of fire-breathing spray

and fierce jaws of devouring lava; the eddying whorls of dust; the

resistless mountain-torrent; the meadow-dews; the flowers of spring

and fruits of summer; the evergreen olive, and trees that give leafy

shelter from dogstar heat. For all this world of wonder and beauty

Sophocles offers only a few meagre allusions to the phenomena presented

by sunshine and storm. No poet has ever so entirely concentrated

his attention on human deeds and human passions. Only the grove of

Colônus, interwoven with his own earliest recollections, had power

to draw from him, in extreme old age, a song such as the nightingale

might have warbled amid those inviolable recesses where the ivy and

laurel, the vine and olive gave a never-failing shelter against sun and

wind alike. Yet even this leafy covert is but an image of the poet’s

own imagination, undisturbed by outward influences, self-involved,

self-protected, and self-sustained. Of course, we are only restating

in different language what has long been known, that the epic element

of poetry, before so prominent, was with Sophocles entirely displaced

by the dramatic; but if Sophocles became the greatest dramatist of

antiquity, it was precisely because no other writer could, like him,

work out a catastrophe solely through the action of mind on mind,

without any intervention of physical force; and if he possessed this

faculty, it was because Greek thought as a whole had been turned

inward; because he shared in the devotion to psychological studies

equally exemplified by his younger contemporaries, Protagoras,

Thucydides, and Socrates, all of whom might have taken for their motto

the noble lines—

‘On earth there is nothing great but man,

In man there is nothing great but mind.’

We have said that Protagoras was a partisan of Nomos, or convention,

against Nature. That was the conservative side of his character.

Still, Nomos was not with him what it had been with the older Greeks,

an immutable tradition indistinguishable from physical law. It was a

human creation, and represented the outcome of inherited experience,

admitting always of change for the better. Hence the vast importance

which he attributed to education. This, no doubt, was magnifying

his own office, for the training of youth was his profession. But,

unquestionably, the feelings of his more liberal contemporaries

went with him. A generation before, Pindar had spoken scornfully of

intellectual culture as a vain attempt to make up for the absence of

genius which the gods alone could give. Yet Pindar himself was always

careful to dwell on the services rendered by professional trainers to

the victorious athletes whose praises he sang, and there was really

no reason why genius and culture should be permanently dissociated. A

Themistocles might decide offhand on the questions brought before him;

a Pericles, dealing with much more complex interests, already needed a

more careful preparation.

On the other hand, conservatives like Aristophanes continued to oppose

the spread of education with acrimonious zeal. Some of their arguments

have a curiously familiar ring. Intellectual pursuits, they said, were

bad for the health, led to irreligion and immorality, made young people

quite unlike their grandfathers, and were somehow or other connected

with loose company and a fast life. This last insinuation was in one

respect the very reverse of true. So far as personal morality went,

nothing could be better for it than the change introduced by Protagoras

from amateur to paid teaching. Before this time, a Greek youth who

wished for something better than the very elementary instruction given

at school, could only attach himself to some older and wiser friend,

whose conversation might be very improving, but who was pretty sure

to introduce a sentimental element into their relationship equally

discreditable to both.[70] A similar danger has always existed with

regard to highly intelligent women, although it may have threatened

a smaller number of individuals; and the efforts now being made to

provide them with a systematic education under official superintendence

will incidentally have the effect of saving our future Héloises and

Julies from the tuition of an Abélard or a Saint-Preux.

It was their habit of teaching rhetoric as an art which raised the

fiercest storm of indignation against Protagoras and his colleagues.

The endeavour to discover rules for addressing a tribunal or a popular

assembly in the manner best calculated to win their assent had

originated quite independently of any philosophical theory. On the

re-establishment of order, that is to say of popular government, in

Sicily, many lawsuits arose out of events which had happened years

before; and, owing to the lapse of time, demonstrative evidence was not

available. Accordingly, recourse was had on both sides to arguments

possessing a greater or less degree of probability. The art of putting

such probable inferences so as to produce persuasion demanded great

technical skill; and two Sicilians, Corax and Tisias by name, composed

treatises on the subject. It would appear that the new-born art was

taken up by Protagoras and developed in the direction of increased

dialectical subtlety. We are informed that he undertook to make the

worse appear the better reason; and this very soon came to be popularly

considered as an accomplishment taught by all philosophers, Socrates

among the rest. But if Protagoras merely meant that he would teach the

art of reasoning, one hardly sees how he could have expressed himself

otherwise, consistently with the antithetical style of his age. We

should say more simply that a case is strengthened by the ability to

argue it properly. It has not been shown that the Protagorean dialectic

offered exceptional facilities for maintaining unjust pretensions.

Taken, however, in connexion with the humanistic teaching, it had an

unsettling and sceptical tendency. All belief and all practice rested

on law, and law was the result of a convention made among men and

ultimately produced by individual conviction. What one man had done

another could undo. Religious tradition and natural right, the sole

external standards, had already disappeared. There remained the test

of self-consistency, and against this all the subtlety of the new

dialectic was turned. The triumph of Eristic was to show that a speaker

had contradicted himself, no matter how his statements might be worded.

Moreover, now that reference to an objective reality was disallowed,

words were put in the place of things and treated like concrete

realities. The next step was to tear them out of the grammatical

construction, where alone they possessed any truth or meaning, each

being simultaneously credited with all the uses which at any time it

might be made to fulfil. For example, if a man knew one thing he knew

all, for he had knowledge, and knowledge is of everything knowable.

Much that seems to us tedious or superfluous in Aristotle’s expositions

was intended as a safeguard against this endless cavilling. Finally,

negation itself was eliminated along with the possibility of falsehood

and contradiction. For it was argued that ‘nothing’ had no existence

and could not be an object of thought.[71]

VI.

From utter confusion to extreme nihilism there was but a single step.

This step was taken by Gorgias, the Sicilian rhetorician, who held

the same relation towards western Hellas and the Eleatic school as

that which Protagoras held towards eastern Hellas and the philosophy

of Heracleitus. He, like his eminent contemporary, was opposed to the

thinkers whom, borrowing a useful term from the nomenclature of the

last century, we may call the Greek physiocrats. To confute them,

he wrote a book with the significant title, _On Nature or Nothing_:

maintaining, first, that nothing exists; secondly, that if anything

exists, we cannot know it; thirdly, that if we know it, there is no

possibility of communicating our knowledge to others. The first thesis

was established by pushing the Eleatic arguments against movement

and change a little further; the second by showing that thought and

existence are different, or else everything that is thought of would

exist; the third by establishing a similar incommensurability between

words and sensations. Grote has attempted to show that Gorgias was

only arguing against the existence of a noumenon underlying phenomena,

such as all idealists deny. Zeller has, however, convincingly proved

that Gorgias, in common with every other thinker before Plato, was

ignorant of this distinction;[72] and we may add that it would leave

the second and third theses absolutely unimpaired. We must take the

whole together as constituting a declaration of war against science,

an assertion, in still stronger language, of the agnosticism taught

by Protagoras. The truth is, that a Greek controversialist generally

overproved his case, and in order to overwhelm an adversary pulled

down the whole house, even at the risk of being buried among the ruins

himself. A modern reasoner, taking his cue from Gorgias, without

pushing the matter to such an extreme, might carry on his attack on

lines running parallel with those laid down by the Sicilian Sophist. He

would begin by denying the existence of a ‘state of Nature’; for such a

state must be either variable or constant. If it is constant, how could

civilisation ever have arisen? If it is variable, what becomes of the

fixed standard appealed to? Then, again, supposing such a state ever

to have existed, how could authentic information about it have come

down to us through the ages of corruption which are supposed to have

intervened? And, lastly, granting that a state of Nature accessible to

enquiry has ever existed, how can we reorganise society on the basis of

such discordant data as are presented to us by the physiocrats, no two

of whom agree with regard to the first principles of natural order; one

saying that it is equality, another aristocracy, and a third despotism?

We do not say that these arguments are conclusive, we only mean that

in relation to modern thought they very fairly represent the dialectic

artillery brought to bear by Greek humanism against its naturalistic

opponents.

We have seen how Prodicus and Hippias professed to teach all science,

all literature, and all virtuous accomplishments. We have seen how

Protagoras rejected every kind of knowledge unconnected with social

culture. We now find Gorgias going a step further. In his later years,

at least, he professes to teach nothing but rhetoric or the art of

persuasion. We say in his later years, for at one time he seems to have

taught ethics and psychology as well.[73] But the Gorgias of Plato’s

famous dialogue limits himself to the power of producing persuasion

by words on all possible subjects, even those of whose details he is

ignorant. Wherever the rhetorician comes into competition with the

professional he will beat him on his own ground, and will be preferred

to him for every public office. The type is by no means extinct, and

flourishes like a green bay-tree among ourselves. Like Pendennis, a

writer of this kind will review any book from the height of superior

knowledge acquired by two hours’ reading in the British Museum; or,

if he is adroit enough, will dispense with even that slender amount

of preparation. He need not even trouble himself to read the book

which he criticises. A superficial acquaintance with magazine articles

will qualify him to pass judgment on all life, all religion, and all

philosophy. But it is in politics that the finest career lies before

him. He rises to power by attacking the measures of real statesmen, and

remains there by adopting them. He becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer

by gross economical blundering, and Prime Minister by a happy mixture

of epigram and adulation.

Rhetoric conferred even greater power in old Athens than in modern

England. Not only did mastery of expression lead to public employment;

but also, as every citizen was permitted by law to address his

assembled fellow-countrymen and propose measures for their acceptance,

it became a direct passport to supreme political authority. Nor was

this all. At Athens the employment of professional advocates was

not allowed, and it was easy to prosecute an enemy on the most

frivolous pretexts. If the defendant happened to be wealthy, and

if condemnation involved a loss of property, there was a prejudice

against him in the minds of the jury, confiscation being regarded as

a convenient resource for replenishing the national exchequer. Thus

the possession of rhetorical ability became a formidable weapon in

the hands of unscrupulous citizens, who were enabled to extort large

sums by the mere threat of putting rich men on their trial for some

real or pretended offence. This systematic employment of rhetoric for

purposes of self-aggrandisement bore much the same relation to the

teaching of Protagoras and Gorgias as the open and violent seizure of

supreme power on the plea of natural superiority bore to the theories

of their rivals, being the way in which practical men applied the

principle that truth is determined by persuasion. It was also attended

by considerably less danger than a frank appeal to the right of the

stronger, so far at least as the aristocratic party were concerned.

For they had been taught a lesson not easily forgotten by the downfall

of the oligarchies established in 411 and 404; and the second

catastrophe especially proved that nothing but a popular government

was possible in Athens. Accordingly, the nobles set themselves to

study new methods for obtaining their ultimate end, which was always

the possession of uncontrolled power over the lives and fortunes of

their fellow-citizens. With wealth to purchase instruction from the

Sophists, with leisure to practise oratory, and with the ability often

accompanying high birth, there was no reason why the successors of

Charmides and Critias should not enjoy all the pleasures of tyranny

unaccompanied by any of its drawbacks. Here, again, a parallel suggests

itself between ancient Greece and modern Europe. On the Continent,

where theories of natural law are far more prevalent than with us, it

is by brute force that justice is trampled down: the one great object

of every ambitious intriguer is to possess himself of the military

machine, his one great terror, that a stronger man may succeed in

wresting it from him; in England the political adventurer looks to

rhetoric as his only resource, and at the pinnacle of power has to

dread the hailstorm of epigrammatic invective directed against him by

abler or younger rivals.[74]

Besides its influence on the formation and direction of political

eloquence, the doctrine professed by Protagoras had a far-reaching

effect on the subsequent development of thought. Just as Cynicism was

evolved from the theory of Hippias, so also did the teaching which

denied Nature and concentrated all study on subjective phenomena, with

a tendency towards individualistic isolation, lead on to the system of

Aristippus. The founder of the Cyrenaic school is called a Sophist by

Aristotle, nor can the justice of the appellation be doubted. He was,

it is true, a friend and companion of Socrates, but intellectually

he is more nearly related to Protagoras. Aristippus rejected

physical studies, reduced all knowledge to the consciousness of our

own sensations, and made immediate gratification the end of life.

Protagoras would have objected to the last principle, but it was only

an extension of his own views, for all history proves that Hedonism is

constantly associated with sensationalism. The theory that knowledge is

built up out of feelings has an elective affinity for the theory that

action is, or ought to be, determined in the last resort by the most

prominent feelings, which are pleasure and pain. Both theories have

since been strengthened by the introduction of a new and more ideal

element into each. We have come to see that knowledge is constituted

not by sensations alone, but by sensations grouped according to

certain laws which seem to be inseparable from the existence of any

consciousness whatever. And, similarly, we have learned to take into

account, not merely the momentary enjoyments of an individual, but his

whole life’s happiness as well, and not his happiness only, but also

that of the whole community to which he belongs. Nevertheless, in both

cases it is rightly held that the element of feeling preponderates, and

the doctrines of such thinkers as J. S. Mill are legitimately traceable

through Epicurus and Aristippus to Protagoras as their first originator.

Notwithstanding the importance of this impulse, it does not represent

the whole effect produced by Protagoras on philosophy. His eristic

method was taken up by the Megaric school, and at first combined with

other elements borrowed from Parmenides and Socrates, but ultimately

extricated from them and used as a critical solvent of all dogmatism

by the later Sceptics. From their writings, after a long interval of

enforced silence, it passed over to Montaigne, Bayle, Hume, and Kant,

with what redoubtable consequences to received opinions need not here

be specified. Our object is simply to illustrate the continuity of

thought, and the powerful influence exercised by ancient Greece on its

subsequent development.

Every variety of opinion current among the Sophists reduces itself,

in the last analysis, to their fundamental antithesis between Nature

and Law, the latter being somewhat ambiguously conceived by its

supporters as either human reason or human will, or more generally

as both together, combining to assert their self-dependence and

emancipation from external authority. This antithesis was prefigured in

the distinction between Chthonian and Olympian divinities. Continuing

afterwards to inspire the rivalry of opposing schools, Cynic against

Cyrenaic, Stoic against Epicurean, Sceptic against Dogmatist, it was

but partially overcome by the mediatorial schemes of Socrates and his

successors. Then came Catholicism, equally adverse to the pretensions

of either party, and held them down under its suffocating pressure for

more than a thousand years.

‘Natur und Geist, so spricht man nicht zu Christen,

Darum verbrennt man Atheisten;

Natur ist Sünde, Geist ist Teufel.’

Both slowly struggled back into consciousness in the fitful dreams

of mediaeval sleep. Nature was represented by astrology with its

fatalistic predetermination of events; idealism by the alchemical

lore which was to give its possessor eternal youth and inexhaustible

wealth. With the complete revival of classic literature and the

temporary neutralisation of theology by internal discord, both sprang

up again in glorious life, and produced the great art of the sixteenth

century, the great science and philosophy of the seventeenth. Later

on, becoming self-conscious, they divide, and their partisans draw off

into two opposing armies, Rousseau against Voltaire, Herder against

Kant, Goethe against Schiller, Hume against himself. Together they

bring about the Revolution; but after marching hand in hand to the

destruction of all existing institutions they again part company, and,

putting on the frippery of a dead faith, confront one another, each

with its own ritual, its own acolytes, its own intolerance, with feasts

of Nature and goddesses of Reason, in mutual and murderous hostility.

When the storm subsided, new lines of demarcation were laid down, and

the cause of political liberty was dissociated from what seemed to be

thoroughly discredited figments. Nevertheless, imaginative literature

still preserves traces of the old conflict, and on examining the four

greatest English novelists of the last fifty years we shall find that

Dickens and Charlotte Bronté, though personally most unlike, agree

in representing the arbitrary, subjective, ideal side of life, the

subjugation of things to self, not of self to things; he transfiguring

them in the light of humour, fancy, sentiment; she transforming

them by the alchemy of inward passion; while Thackeray and George

Eliot represent the triumph of natural forces over rebellious

individualities; the one writer depicting an often crude reality at

odds with convention and conceit; while the other, possessing, if

not an intrinsically greater genius, at least a higher philosophical

culture, discloses to us the primordial necessities of existence, the

pitiless conformations of circumstance, before which egoism, ignorance,

illusion, and indecision must bow, or be crushed to pieces if they

resist.

VII.

Our readers have now before them everything of importance that is

known about the Sophists, and something more that is not known for

certain, but may, we think, be reasonably conjectured. Taking the

whole class together, they represent a combination of three distinct

tendencies, the endeavour to supply an encyclopaedic training for

youth, the cultivation of political rhetoric as a special art, and

the search after a scientific foundation for ethics derived from the

results of previous philosophy. With regard to the last point, they

agree in drawing a fundamental distinction between Nature and Law,

but some take one and some the other for their guide. The partisans

of Nature lean to the side of a more comprehensive education, while

their opponents tend more and more to lay an exclusive stress on

oratorical proficiency. Both schools are at last infected by the

moral corruption of the day, natural right becoming identified with

the interest of the stronger, and humanism leading to the denial of

objective reality, the substitution of illusion for knowledge, and the

confusion of momentary gratification with moral good. The dialectical

habit of considering every question under contradictory aspects

degenerates into eristic prize-fighting and deliberate disregard

of the conditions which alone make argument possible. Finally, the

component elements of Sophisticism are dissociated from one another,

and are either separately developed or pass over into new combinations.

Rhetoric, apart from speculation, absorbs the whole time and talent

of an Isocrates; general culture is imparted by a professorial class

without originality, but without reproach; naturalism and sensuous

idealism are worked up into systematic completion for the sake of their

philosophical interest alone; and the name of sophistry is unhappily

fastened by Aristotle on paid exhibitions of verbal wrangling which the

great Sophists would have regarded with indignation and disgust.

It remains for us to glance at the controversy which has long been

carried on respecting the true position of the Sophists in Greek life

and thought. We have already alluded to the by no means favourable

judgment passed on them by some among their contemporaries. Socrates

condemned them severely,[H] but only because they received payment for

their lessons; and the sentiment was probably echoed by many who had

neither his disinterestedness nor his frugality. To make profit by

intellectual work was not unusual in Greece. Pheidias sold his statues;

Pindar spent his life writing for money; Simonides and Sophocles were

charged with showing too great eagerness in the pursuit of gain.[75]

But a man’s conversation with his friends had always been gratuitous,

and the novel idea of charging a high fee for it excited considerable

offence. Socrates called it prostitution—the sale of that which should

be the free gift of love—without perhaps sufficiently considering

that the same privilege had formerly been purchased with a more

dishonourable price. He also considered that a freeman was degraded

by placing himself at the beck and call of another, although it would

appear that the Sophists chose their own time for lecturing, and were

certainly not more slaves than a sculptor or poet who had received an

order to execute. It was also argued that any one who really succeeded

in improving the community benefited so much by the result that it

was unfair on his part to demand any additional remuneration. Suppose

a popular preacher were to come over from New York to England, star

about among the principal cities, charging a high price for admission

to his sermons, and finally return home in possession of a handsome

fortune, we can well imagine that sarcasms at the expense of such

profitable piety would not be wanting. This hypothetical case will help

us to understand how many an honest Athenian must have felt towards the

showy colonial strangers who were making such a lucrative business of

teaching moderation and justice. Plato, speaking for his master but not

from his master’s standpoint, raised an entirely different objection.

He saw no reason why the Sophists should not sell their wisdom if

they had any wisdom to sell. But this was precisely what he denied.

He submitted their pretensions to a searching cross-examination,

and, as he considered, convicted them of being worthless pretenders.

There was a certain unfairness about this method, for neither his

own positive teaching nor that of Socrates could have stood before

a similar test, as Aristotle speedily demonstrated in the next

generation. He was, in fact, only doing for Protagoras and Gorgias

what they had done for early Greek speculation, and what every school

habitually does for its predecessors. It had yet to be learned that

this dissolving dialectic constitutes the very law of philosophical

progress. The discovery was made by Hegel, and it is to him that the

Sophists owe their rehabilitation in modern times. His lectures on

the History of Philosophy contain much that was afterwards urged by

Grote on the same side. Five years before the appearance of Grote’s

famous sixty-seventh chapter, Lewes had also published a vindication

of the Sophists, possibly suggested by Hegel’s work, which he had

certainly consulted when preparing his own History. There is, however,

this great difference, that while the two English critics endeavour

to minimise the sceptical, innovating tendency of the Sophists, it

is, contrariwise, brought into exaggerated prominence by the German

philosopher. We have just remarked that the final dissolution of

Sophisticism was brought about by the separate development given to

each of the various tendencies which it temporarily combined. Now,

each of our three apologists has taken up one of these tendencies, and

treated it as constituting the whole movement under discussion. To

Hegel, the Sophists are chiefly subjective idealists. To Lewes, they

are rhetoricians like Isocrates. To Grote, they are, what in truth the

Sophists of the Roman empire were, teachers representing the standard

opinions of their age. Lewes and Grote are both particularly anxious

to prove that the original Sophists did not corrupt Greek morality.

Thus much has been conceded by contemporary German criticism, and is

no more than was observed by Plato long ago. Grote further asserts

that the implied corruption of morality is an illusion, and that at

the end of the Peloponnesian war the Athenians were no worse than

their forefathers who fought at Marathon. His opinion is shared by

so accomplished a scholar as Prof. Jowett;[76] but here he has the

combined authority of Thucydides, Aristophanes, and Plato against him.

We have, however, examined this question already, and need not return

to it. Whether any of the Sophists themselves can be proved to have

taught immoral doctrines is another moot point. Grote defends them

all, Polus and Thrasymachus included. Here, also, we have expressed

our dissent from the eminent historian, whom we can only suppose to

have missed the whole point of Plato’s argument. Lewes takes different

ground when he accuses Plato of misrepresenting his opponents. It is

true that the Sophists cannot be heard in self-defence, but there is

no internal improbability about the charges brought against them. The

Greek rhetoricians are not accused of saying anything that has not been

said again and again by their modern representatives. Whether the odium

of such sentiments should attach itself to the whole class of Sophists

is quite another question. Grote denies that they held any doctrine in

common. The German critics, on the other hand, insist on treating them

as a school with common principles and tendencies. Brandis calls them

‘a number of men, gifted indeed, but not seekers after knowledge for

its own sake, who made a trade of giving instruction as a means for

the attainment of external and selfish ends, and of substituting mere

technical proficiency for real science.’[77] If our account be the true

one, this would apply to Gorgias and the younger rhetoricians alone.

One does not precisely see what external or selfish ends were subserved

by the physical philosophy which Prodicus and Hippias taught, nor

why the comprehensive enquiries of Protagoras into the conditions of

civilisation and the limits of human knowledge should be contemptuously

flung aside because he made them the basis of an honourable profession.

Zeller, in much the same strain, defines a Sophist as one who professes

to be a teacher of wisdom, while his object is individual culture (die

formelle und praktische Bildung des Subjekts) and not the scientific

investigation of truth.[78] We do not know whether Grote was content

with an explanation which would only have required an unimportant

modification of his own statements to agree precisely with them. It

ought amply to have satisfied Lewes. For ourselves, we must confess to

caring very little whether the Sophists investigated truth for its own

sake or as a means to self-culture. We believe, and in the next chapter

we hope to show, that Socrates, at any rate, did not treat knowledge

apart from practice as an end in itself. But the history of philosophy

is not concerned with such subtleties as these. Our contention is that

the Stoic, Epicurean, and Sceptical schools may be traced back through

Antisthenes and Aristippus to Hippias and Protagoras much more directly

than to Socrates. If Zeller will grant this, then he can no longer

treat Sophisticism as a mere solvent of the old physical philosophy.

If he denies it, we can only appeal to his own history, which here, as

well as in our discussions of early Greek thought, we have found more

useful than any other work on the subject. Our obligations to Grote

are of a more general character. We have learned from him to look at

the Sophists without prejudice. But we think that he, too, underrates

their far-reaching intellectual significance, while his defence of

their moral orthodoxy seems, so far as certain members of the class are

concerned, inconsistent with any belief in Plato’s historical fidelity.

That the most eminent Sophists did nothing to corrupt Greek morality

is now almost universally admitted. If we have succeeded in showing

that they did not corrupt but fruitfully develop Greek philosophy, the

purpose of this study will have been sufficiently fulfilled.

The title of this chapter may have seemed to promise more than a

casual mention of the thinker in whom Greek Humanism attained its

loftiest and purest expression. But in history, no less than in life,

Socrates must ever stand apart from the Sophists. Beyond and above all

specialities of teaching, the transcendent dignity of a character which

personified philosophy itself demands a separate treatment. Readers who

have followed us thus far may feel interested in an attempt to throw

some new light on one who was a riddle to his contemporaries, and has

remained a riddle to after-ages.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] ‘Thou shalt not take that which is mine, and may I do to others as

I would that they should do to me’ (Plato, _Legg._, 913, A. Jowett’s

Transl., vol. V., p. 483). Isocrates makes a king addressing his

governors say: ‘You should be to others what you think I should be to

you’ (_Nicocles_, 49). And again: ‘Do not to others what it makes you

angry to suffer yourselves’ (_Ibid._, 61). A similar observation is

attributed to Thales, doubtless by an anachronism (Diogenes Laertius,

I., i., 36).

[44] We gladly avail ourselves of the masterly translation given by

Prof. Jebb. The whole of this splendid passage will be found in his

_Attic Orators_, vol. II., pp. 78-79.

[45] _Symposium_, 211, C; Jowett’s Transl., vol. II.

[46] Aesch., _Sep. con. Theb._, 592.

[47] _Legg._, 727, E; Jowett’s Transl., V, 299.

[48] See Plato’s _Charmides_; and Euripides’ _Medea_, 635 (Dindorf).

[49] Pindar uses καιρός and μέτρον as synonymous terms.

[50] _Opp. et D._, 271.

[51] Hom. _Il._, IV., 160, 235; VII., 76, 411; XVI., 386. Hes., _Opp.

et D._, 265. These references are copied from Welcker, _Griechische

Götterlehre_, I., p. 178, q. v.

[52] See Maine’s _Ancient Law_, chap. X., _The Early History of Delict

and Crime_.

[53] Preller, _Griechische Mythologie_, I., p. 523 (3rd ed.), with

which cf. Welcker, _op. cit._, I., 234; and Mr. Walter Pater’s _Demeter

and Persephone_, and _A Study of Dionysus_, in the _Fortnightly Review_

for Jan., Feb., and Dec. 1876. From their popular character, the

country gods were favoured by the despots (Curtius, _Gr. Gesch._, I.,

p. 338).

[54] Cf. Wordsworth—

‘Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,

And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.’

_Ode to Duty._

[55] Pindar, _Olymp._, II., 57 ff.; and _Fragm._, 1-4 (Donaldson).

[56] _Sep. con. Theb._, 662-71.

[57] _Phoenissae_, 503-23.

[58]

Οὐ γὰρ ἄλλῳ γ’ ὑπακούσαιμεν τῶν νῦν μετεωροσοφιστῶν

πλὴν ἢ Προδίκῳ, τῷ μὲν σοφίας καὶ γνώμης οὕνεκα κ.τ.λ.—

_Nub._, 361-2. Cf. _Av._, 692.

[59] Plato, _Protagoras_, 337, D; Jowett’s Transl., vol. I., p. 152.

[60] _Nem._, VI., _sub. in._

[61] _Prom._, 518.

[62] _Phoenissae_, 536-47. There is a delicious parody of this method

in the _Clouds_. A creditor asks Strepsiades, who has been taking

lessons in philosophy, to pay him the interest on a loan. Strepsiades

begs to know whether the sea is any fuller now than it used to be.

‘No,’ replies the other, ‘for it would not be just,’ (οὐ γὰρ δίκαιον

πλείον εἶναι). ‘Then, you wretch,’ rejoins his debtor, ‘do you suppose

that the sea is not to get any fuller although all the rivers are

flowing into it, and that your money is to go on increasing?’ (1290-95.)

[63] Xenophon, _Memor._, IV., iv., 19.

[64] _Pol._, I., ii.

[65] The _Hippias Minor_.

[66] Diog. L., IX., viii., 54.

[67] Diog. L., IX., viii., 51.

[68] Plato, _Protagoras_, 327; Jowett’s Transl., vol. I., p. 140. On

the superior morality which accompanies advancing civilisation, as

evinced by the great increase of mutual trust, see Maine’s _Ancient

Law_, pp. 306-7.

[69] This point is noticed by Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, II., 22.

[70] This phase of Greek life is well illustrated by the addresses of

Theognis to Cyrnus.

[71] Eristicism had also points of contact with the philosophies of

Parmenides and Socrates which will be indicated in a future chapter.

[72] _Ph. d. Gr._, I., 903 (3rd ed.).

[73] See Plato’s _Meno_, _sub. in._

[74] Lord Beaconsfield recently [written in February 1880] spoke of the

Balkans as forming an ‘intelligible’ frontier for Turkey. Continental

telegrams substituted ‘natural frontier.’ The change was characteristic

and significant.

[75] Aristoph., _Pax_, 697.

[76] ‘As Mr. Grote remarks, there is no reason to suspect any greater

moral corruption in the age of Demosthenes than in the age of

Pericles.’ (_The Dialogues of Plato_, vol. IV., p. 380.) We do not

remember that Grote commits himself to such a sweeping statement, nor

was it necessary for his purpose to do so. No one would have been more

surprised than Demosthenes himself to hear that the Athenians of his

generation equalled the contemporaries of Pericles in public virtue.

(Cf. Grote’s _Plato_, II., 148.)

[77] _Geschichte der Entwickelung der Griechischen Philosophie_, I., p.

204.

[78] _Philosophie d. Gr._, I., p. 943 (3rd ed.).

[79] The invention of memoir-writing is claimed by Prof. Mahaffy

(_Hist. Gr. Lit._, II., 42) for Ion of Chios and his contemporary

Stesimbrotus. But—apart from their questionable authenticity—the

sketches attributed to these two writers do not seem to have aimed at

presenting a complete picture of a single individual, which is what was

attempted with considerable success in Xenophon’s _Memorabilia_.